Mi ta bai bin Bek, Portrait of Queer abroad the Statendam, Artist Pseudomimetic Archive  2023. 21cm x 19 cm, Acrylic on linen.

Mi ta bai bin bek (Self-portrait of queer artist returning to Venezuela aboard the Statendam), 2023, 21cm x 19 cm, acrylic on linen.

The original image documents jazz pianist Pia Beck’s journey aboard the Statendam on a tour that took her to North America, Curaçao, Venezuela, and Havana. I created two versions of the same image, incorporating myself into one of them (a self-portrait), “putting myself in Beck’s place”, to fictionalize the story it tells and make it part of the pseudomimetic archive. Pia Beck was a Dutch artist known for her open homosexuality and lived with her partner in Franco’s Spain. I am interested in using fiction to challenge the archive’s narrative regime (and its colonial perspective) as a device or technology of political imagination.